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A legal challenge to Google search results garners more sympathy in Europe than it would in the U.S.

A cutting edge legal complaint in Europe over Internet reputation could force Google to rethink how it handles individuals' control over the search results for their names.

Spanish plastic surgeon Hugo Guidotti Russo wanted Google to liposuction from his results a 1991 news article about a patient angry about an allegedly botched breast surgery. The article, from El País, about a breast surgery gone wrong that led a female patient to accuse Russo of malpractice, has the translated headline, "The risk of wanting to be slim." Russo was later cleared of wrongdoing in the surgery but the article -- which doesn't mention his acquittal -- shows up on Russo's first page of results. Google, as is its policy, refused to scrub it.

The case is one of over 80 in Spain in which the country's privacy regulator, the Agency for Data Protection, has ordered Google to intervene and delete links from search results because they are out of date or contain inaccurate information. The agency summed up the conflict with a public advisory on its website in January: "Google Trial. The right to forget meets the freedom of information." The "right to be forgotten" is not one found in the American Bill of Rights, but it's becoming a popular one in Europe in the digital age, even if it does sound like the most depressing right ever.

The E.U. is considering new privacy laws that would include the "right to be forgotten" -- i.e., the right to have data about yourself removed from databases and the Internet. Spain is already pushing this one forward.

While there have been quite a few lawsuits in the U.S. over embarrassing search results, U.S. courts have generally been unsympathetic. Europe, though, tends to be more interventionist about privacy protection -- as Google well knows. Four of its executives were recently given jail sentences in Italy because of Italian schoolkids who violated the privacy of a disabled classmate by bullying him and uploading the video to YouTube. Business Insider called that ruling "stunningly stupid." Google is appealing the decision.